Social goals and gains of adolescent bullying and aggression: A meta-analysis

Abstract

There is a long-standing debate on the goals that underlie adolescent socially coercive behaviors, such as bullying, relational aggression, and instrumental aggression. Knowledge about these goals is critical for the development of effective interventions. Bridging evolutionary and social-cognitive perspectives, we propose and substantiate a Social Goals and Gains Model of Adolescent Bullying and Aggression. The model holds that adolescents who hold agentic goals (i.e., getting ahead of others), rather than communal goals (i.e., getting along with others), engage in more bullying and aggression. Engaging in bullying and aggression, in turn, may lead adolescents to gain popularity but lose likeability. To substantiate this model, we meta-analyzed data of 164,143 adolescents (age range: 8–20 years), from 148 independent samples, with Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling (MASEM). Our results both support and refine our model. As hypothesized, adolescents’ agentic goals were associated with higher levels of bullying and aggression. Bullying and aggression, in turn, were associated with higher popularity but lower likeability. However, there was no significant association between adolescents’ communal goals and bullying or aggression. These findings suggest that socially coercive behaviors, such as bullying and aggression, can be fueled by agentic goals and potentially lead to gains in popularity but losses in likeability. This suggests that intervention programs could reduce bullying and aggression by changing the means through which adolescents pursue agentic goals.